My journal of the adventures and activities that I enjoy in my life. Some posts will be work related. Other posts will be family related. A smattering of me is what you will get by reading this blog.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

#SQLFirsts

The other day I blogged a list of 'My Firsts'. Simple things like first kiss, first state I lived in, and so on.

After reading this blog post, a twitter friend replied that he really enjoyed it. This was over twitter, of course. I went on to tell him that I had wanted to do one about SQL Server Firsts, and needed help. He came up with a couple 'Firsts', as did I. We did this on Twitter, and before we knew it, 40 tweets had come in with different ideas on 'Firsts'. All this occurred in the Twitterverse in under 1 hour.I am sure that more are to come.

So, here are some sample ones i had come up with prior to this Twitter Attack.

Now, I will proceed to unveil the ones that came in over the Twitterverse, giving props to the tweeps that tweeted them. Think about these, apply them to yourself. When did you do similar actions? which ones have you not done, thankfully?

@jcumberland1. corrected a developers faulty delete script and forgot a parenthesis, resulting in a 56M row delete that then had to be restored2. Accidentally "Denied All" on SSO users table to to Authenticated Users

@peschkaj1. 1st time you accidentally deleted the Customers table in production replaced deeply nested cursors with a single set based operation (that was a rewarding day)2. wrote SELECT * FROM table that made it into production 3. The first time I looked at an execution plan and understood what was going on.

@Jim_McLeod1. When you dropped a table from production? 2. First time you truly grokked set-based SQL instead of doing things procedurally?3. Tuned a query from 30 minutes down to less than one?

@sqlagentman1. Built first sql cluster2. Locked sql service acct due to rdp w/ a bad pwd 3. Stepped on stage for 1st time to host SQL Quizbowl. May have peed myself a little.

@SQLBatMan1. rebuilding index during production day2. manual failover of cluster during production day 3. use ent mgr to reposition a column in table 4. old auditor that you had no idea how logins get added to a server 5. completely filled backup drive6. pipe trace to table, fill data drive on prod server7. Passed cert exams8. attend PASS9. migrate from sybase to mssql #10. all developer to the mat because they knew crap about tsql and db design11. wrote first article (for SSC) 12. presented talk at PASS13. wrote first article for simple-talk 14. attend first PASS volunteer outing at Billy Bob's15. server powered down because of routine building power outage would not come back up 16. rebuild master

@tjaybelt1. started a job, instead of viewing history2. created a history table on oltp system, forgot PK, clustered and non clustered indexes, just a heap3. used tsql to perform backup, not the UI4. created a trigger5. wrote a cursor6. then wrote a cursor that never stopped7. then wrote a cursor that never stopped, and inserted too many records8. wrote a ShowContig, got the results, and understood them9. wrote a Show_Statistics, got the results, and understood them10. performed index maintenance on a ginormous table, in production, during day, during busiest time of day11. understood coalesce12. presented on a SQL topic you knew little about to a large crowd13. wrote first article for SQL Server Central14. wrote first article for SQL-Server-Performance.com15. started a transaction. performed an update. confirmed update succeeded. went to lunch. got a phone call...16. created a Crystal report against SQL Server db 17. created a Reporting Services report against SQL Server db18. moved master db19. moved tempdb

For a full list of those that were tweeted, and others not present here, check out the Search feature of Twitter at http://Search.Twitter.com and see how many #sqlfirsts are there. More have shown up since last night. I am sure that more will come in as time marches along.

I will gather more of these, clean them up, and sometime present them as a more cohesive list of SQL firsts. I believe that it's important for each of us to review items like this from time to time, and make a mental note of where we are in our respective career paths. We can then better realize that we all have made mistakes, all have learned different things along the way, and more importantly, can all help each other out. That is why you are reading this far anyway, you have a desire to learn more, to help yourself, and possibly help others. Reflect on how far you have come, and make goals for how far you need to go.

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About Me

I love my family, my wife, my 3 kids.
I love to ride my dirtbike, play raquetball, waterski, wood work, paintball, geocache, snowski.
I'm a Microsoft SQL Server Database Administrator living in Utah.
As I look back on my life, I realized that I needed and wanted to document these different activities, for my own record.
This will serve as a journal of sorts on those adventures and activities I enjoy in my life.